Colin Drohan is from Chicago. He is the archives editor for jubilat and the assistant director of writing programs at Catapult. He is an MFA candidate in poetry at UMass Amherst and lives in western Massachusetts.

Blood of the Youth

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I’m just passing through

Watching the changing light

Again capable of only being

Gangly and fragmentary

I miss all my friends

When I think too much

Early memories of nothing

Specific that I’d like

To discuss at length

I’d like the past more

If we could continue

Editing it until we are more

Satisfied with our storylines

There are twenty-three

New extinct species

And the rich continue

To get richer each day

Driving us closer

To that extinction

I’d edit that out

I’d keep the other species

Get rid of the rich

We’d all be okay

Our lives are

Insultingly brief

We might get lucky

I should say here

I’ve been reading a book

About that man who wants

To inject himself

With the blood of the youth

I confess I crave violence

I want to slap him so hard

We’re all going to die

I don’t know what’s hard

To grasp about that

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